House Leader Peter Van Loan said Monday that the Government’s agenda includes passage of Bill C-11 by the end of April. The plan is that the bill to modernize the Copyright Act “must pass” by that time. The government indicated last month it mght impose time allocation to get the bill to Committee. On February 8, 2012 a motion passed in the House of Commons to lmit debate to two more days before sending the bill to committee. The Bill was referred to a legislative committee for stufy on February 13, 2012. MPs agreed to examine the bill clause-by-clause by March 14 and end the study by March 29. The Bill will then be reported back to the House of Commons for Third Reading.

Last Thursday the Government of Canada introduced into the House of Commons Bill C-11, an Act to Amend the Copyright Act. In a press release describing the Bill, Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Christian Paradis, stated that the Bill will ensure that Canada’s copyright laws “are modern, flexible, and in line with current international standards” and will “protect and help create jobs, promote innovation, and attract new investment to Canada.”

This is a preview of Some observations on Bill C-11: The Copyright Modernization Act. Read full post.

July 21, 2011 was the first annual general meeting of Music Canada (formerly CRIA). Not surpisingly, an important focus of the meeting was copyright reform. This issue was highlighted by the presence of Minister Moore, the Heritage Minister, a strong supporter of the creative industries, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Dean Del Mastro, also an important player in the copyright reform process. They both gave strong indications of what’s next for copyright reform.

MP Dean Del Mastro led off by introducing Minister Moore. In doing so, he noted the importance of the cultural sector to Canadians pointing out the tremendous opportunities available to Canadians. He also noted that “no one understands the dynamics of the cultural industries better than Minister Moore”.

This is a preview of What’s next for copyright reform in Canada? (updated). Read full post.

Canada’s last three copyright bills, C-60, C-61 and C-32, attempted to curb illegal online file sharing by requiring ISPs to forward notices of claimed infringements to customers. Canada’s ISPs had advocated for this “notice and notice” process claiming it was effective. However, they never produced any empirical evidence or studies to back up their claims.

This is a preview of Rethinking notice and notice after C-32 (now C-11). Read full post.

Margaret Atwood appeared before the Parliamentary Committee reviewing Bill C-32 on March 10. Participating by teleconference she told the Committee why she was against expanding fair dealing to include education and why she thought doing so was unfair.

Howard Knopf, in a recent blog, To Margaret Atwood: Copyright and Cars Cannot Conflate,accuses Ms Atwood of not understanding what fair dealing is. He further accuses her of getting basic facts about law and economics wrong when said that depriving creators of their rights to authorize the uses of their works is akin to theft. Mr. Knopf’s accusations are both unfair and unfounded.

This is a preview of Margaret Atwood at the Parliamentary Committee on Bill C-32. Read full post.

In the last few weeks Prof. Geist has been writing, blogging, tweeting, speaking and even testifying to a Parliamentary Committee about the IsoHunt case and whether there is a need for an amendment to the Copyright Act to create a new cause of action to make online pirate sites and services liable for enabling copyright infringement. His ostensible claim is that representatives of the recording industry secretly filed a copyright infringement claim against IsoHunt three weeks before Bill C-32 was tabled in the House of Commons; kept the suit secret to improve their chances of getting copyright reforms needed to shut the site down – all the while not needing the amendments because they already have the legal tools necessary to put IsoHunt out of business. These claims were made here, here,here, here, here, here, and here, among others, and were widely disseminated and syndicated by Prof. Geist including here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

This is a preview of Are Canada’s copyright laws friendly or unfriendly towards wealth destroyers according to Prof. Geist?. Read full post.

Last week the Australian Full Court released its decision in the landmark case Roadshow Films Pty Limited v iiNet Limited,[2011] FCAFC 23. The Australian appeals court by majority dismissed the appeal from the decision of the primary judge who had held that iiNet, an ISP in Australia that had not acted on any information provided to it by copyright owners, was not liable for authorizing the copyright infringement of its subscribers who had used its facilities to engage in unlicensed peer to peer file sharing.

This is a preview of iiNet court backs reasonableness of graduated response to stop illegal file sharing. Read full post.

Last week, a dispute arose about the scope of the “fair dealing for the purpose of … education” language proposed in Bill C-32, an Act to Amend the Copyright Act. This dispute was captured in a February 16 blog by John Degen, in which he discussed a running battle with the writer Cory Doctorow about what the Copyright Act currently allows in respect of fair dealing, and what it would allow under the proposed regime. Doctorow’s views are contained here in a responding blog.

This is a preview of Clearing Up the Copyright Confusion (Part II). Read full post.